Word.ws English Dictionary

hunkered down

hunkered down is the simple past and past participle of hunker down.

Meaning of hunker down

Verb

hunker down (third-person singular simple present hunkers down, present participle hunkering down, simple past and past participle hunkered down)

  1. (idiomatic) To take shelter; to prepare oneself for some eventuality; to focus on a task.
    • That test is worth half your grade, so you'd better hunker down and start studying.
  2. (idiomatic) To stubbornly hold to a position.

Questions about hunkered down

What is hunkered down the simple past and past participle of?
Hunkered down is the simple past and past participle of hunker down.

Words near hunkered down in the dictionary

  1. hunk of junk
  2. hunkdom
  3. hunker
  4. hunker down
  5. hunkered
  6. hunkered down
  7. hunkerer
  8. hunkerers
  9. hunkering
  10. hunkering down
  11. hunkerism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hunkered down (page history and authors); hunker down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hunkered down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hunkered_down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.